January 2016

In the first few weeks of the Premier League season, Swansea City looked in line for a top-half of the table finish. Gary Monk’s side was playing glorious football, Bafétimbi Gomis was scoring for fun and Jonjo Shelvey was running games in the midfield. In Swansea City’s early season match at Stamford Bridge against Chelsea, Shevley dominated the midfield against all-world talents in Nemanja Matic and Cesc Fabregas, helping the Swans secure a 2-2 draw against the defending champs.

Three months later, the only thing about that scene that doesn’t seem surprising is that Chelsea were outclassed at home. Since then, things have fallen apart for Swansea, who went from competing for a Europa League spot to the relegation zone rather quickly. Monk is gone and now so is Shelvey, who was shipped off to Newcastle for a modest $17 million transfer fee.

Shelvey was a very good player for the Swans, but the end of his time at the Liberty Stadium seemed to be coming to an end when Monk was sacked. He always seemed to be out of favor with interim manager Alan Curtis, and disciplinary and injury-related issues made for good excuses for Shelvey to be kept out of the lineup even when he was fully fit.

Shelvey has traversed a fare amount of Premier League territory for someone who is 23. He was an Arsenal and West Ham youth product before playing his first professional football for Charlton Athletic. Liverpool signed him in 2010 but mostly kept him on the bench for three seasons, making Shelvey’s stay at Anfield a rather uneventful one. Swansea came calling in 2013 and his tenure in south Wales seemed to be going well.

He signed a contract extension in July to keep him at the club until 2019 and he was a big part of the team’s flying start this season, but by the end of his Swansea stint he was complaining about critical fans and rarely featuring even in league cup matches.

Now Shelvey finds himself at a new club, one where the fans will adore him and where he will be afforded ample opportunities to see that his massive amount of potential is finally realized. Shelvey has the look of a repugnant ball winner, and though he has a penchant for rowdy and often unnecessary antics, he does possess a peculiar creative sense that is going to bolster Newcastle’s attacking prowess.

He is an organizing presence the likes of which Newcastle have been sorely lacking this season. Georginio Wijnaldum, who arrived at St. James’ Park from PSV in the summer for $22 million, brought a spark and a strong will to score goals, but even players as good as Wijnaldum, who is now operating as the Magpies No. 10, have their productivity capped without a reliable quality of service.

Enter Shelvey, an impossibly youthful and stabilizing presence who can pick a pass any where on the field from his perch in the middle of the park. When he gets on the ball, defenders all over the pitch must be aware of their surroundings, because his range of vision extends beyond the touchlines. In his debut for Newcastle, Shelvey picked apart his boyhood club, completing 91.7 percent of his team-high 60 passes while getting 71 touches, just one off of the team high.

Shelvey didn’t have any official box score stats, but he did make both of Newcastle’s goals with stunning passes. Ayoze Perez’s opener came at the end of a move where Shelvey switched play to the flanks, then stepped into the hole to link up with Wijnaldum, who slid the ball over the Perez for the goal.

Ten minutes later, Shelvey found himself on the ball 10 yards behind midfield without a defender in his zip code. With so much space in front of him, Shelvey picked out an unthinkable pass and delivered the ball with impeccable precision to Daryl Janmaat, whose first touch helped put him in position to cross the ball to Wijnaldum for the match-clinching goal.

With Janmaat flying forward and making runs down the touchline, Shelvey was active and ardent in giving his centerbacks an outlet by dropping near the backline. When play moved forward, so did he, and he became an oft-available reference point in the middle of the field. Newcastle boss Steve McClaren likened Shelvey to the offensive organizer in American football, aptly describing his play against West Ham as quarterback like.

Paired with a disruptive force like Jack Colback, who will do a lot of the dirty work in chasing down the ball while helping keep the backline in tune, Shelvey has the freedom to control the game in the midfield. Newcastle will benefit from Shelvey’s incisive passing and his democratic distribution. He won’t change the way Newcastle play, but he will dictate the Magpies ability to execute their style.

It is not very difficult, nor is it especially flattering, to be considered a “breath of fresh air” on a team with a 1-30 record. But for Ish Smith, any welcoming admiration is received with open arms.

Smith is everybody’s favorite peripatetic. His resume is built on 10-day contracts, D-League assignments and end-of-the-bench roles. Only once in his six-year career has he spent an entire season with one team. He’s been waived six times and traded five times. In a 10-month span, Smith was traded to the Pelicans and waived on the same day, signed by the 76ers, signed and waived by the Wizards, claimed by the Pelicans and traded to the 76ers.

Philadelphia’s recent acquisition of Smith is the most promising move for Smith in terms of sticking around for longer than a couple of months. Whereas those other trades included Smith as an inconsequential and purely financial asset, the Sixers gave up two second-round picks to get Smith. It was a bit of an odd move for a team so focused on building from the draft to give up two high second rounders (Philly’s own and one from Denver), but new chairman Jerry Colangelo wanted to bring in a player with experience with his first act in charge of the team and Smith certainly has that.

The Sixers were not exactly phlegmatic before Smith’s arrival; they are a spirited young team that plays hard for Brett Brown that happens to produce depressingly bad results. Smith has given this team a bit of direction and corrected a bit of the chaos. The Sixers have won three of their nine games since his arrival and were within 10 points against the Cavs, Lakers and Jazz. Smith had a career-high 28 points on 55 percent shooting against the Raptors and he compiled double-digit assists against the Cavs, Wolves, Clippers and Jazz.

Even before he was traded to the Sixers, Smith was playing well. The Pelicans started the season without Jrue Holiday and Tyreke Evans, so Smith filled in and averaged 30 minutes a game for the first month of the season. He was scoring 12 points per game and was close to the league lead in assists with an average of eight a night. When Holiday and Evans returned, Smith was banished to the back of the rotation. Although New Orleans got a very nice haul for an end of the bench guy on a one-year deal, Philadelphia was happy to get Smith back into action.

Smith has a spartan skillset and most of his success can be attributed to his speed. He drives as much as Russell Westbrook (10.6 times a game) and averages 1.4 assists on drives per game, the second most in the league behind Rajon Rondo. Smith’s divisive pick-and-roll game, as well as the hiring of pick-and-roll guru Mike D’Antoni, has helped both of Philadelphia’s young big men become more efficient players. Rookie Jahlil Okafor is shooting 60 percent when sharing the floor with Smith, a good 12 percent increase over his season average (47.8 percent), and Nerlens Noel is shooting 68 percent (compared to 50.5 percent for the season).

Smith has shown flashes of being a useful bit player at almost all of his stops, but third-string point guards on minimum deals don’t have much of a shelf life. As a result, Smith has a more colorful costume closet than the late David Bowie. But in Philadelphia, where the goal is to create a semblance of structure whilst maintaining a strong lottery presence, Smith fits perfectly as the 76ers’ engine. With a speedy player like Smith who can break down defense and open up gaps for the bigs to attack in the paint, Okafor and Noel are getting some genuine pick-and-roll reps, making the acquisition of Smith a developmental supplement if anything else.

The Eastern Conference playoff picture is a bit like the Republican Primary race: A bunch of uninspiring candidates clumped together chasing a runaway tyrant.

Although LeBron James and the Cavs are not quite as unlikable as Donald Trump, James’ unrelenting control of the conference has probably outlived its term in the minds of his eastern foes.

The problem with calling for at least a one-year intercession during LeBron’s reign in the East is the lack of a worthy challenger. The second-seeded Bulls are just four games ahead of the eighth-seeded Celtics and only six games ahead of 12th-seeded Wizards. Just about the only two teams that can be confidently ruled out of the postseason picture are the Brooklyn Nets and the Philadelphia 76ers.